Chef’s Table

The road dips down between two large sets of overhead railroad tracks and my African cab driver slows down and pulls up to the curb. As the sounds of his high-life guitar riffs fade into the evening air, I’m left to gape upward at the hulking cold storage facility turned condo building I’ve come to visit. For the past few days—on this, my first trip to Chicago—I have done a lot of gaping. The city continually harnesses your gaze along its strict axes—just as often skyward as outward to the ever-distant horizon.